I've never been a big fisherman. I like it, it's just not something I'd go out of my way to do. Let alone when I have to fish through a giant hole in the ice.

Rick Konakowitz out of New Ulm, Minnesota, and I are not the same.

Konakowitz has been fishing consistently for over two and a half decades, including through the gargantuan layers of ice that his home state offers. Over that significant amount of time while living in the 'Land of 10,000 Lakes,' he had never seen the type of fish that he caught last week.

The fisherman brought in a golden crappie (giggles in middle schooler).

Konakowitz said this to KEYC:

My first impression was that I thought that it was a little bit darker than I thought. Maybe it was a sunfish, but then I got it out of the hole and thought, ‘what the heck is this?’

Loren Miller, a fish geneticist at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, was contacted by KEYC to explain the phenomenon as well:

They are kind of rare mutations, so you have to have a couple of parents carrying them so they can produce them. Then they glow, so, obviously, out in the wild there are a lot of big fish out there waiting to eat them, so it is a surprise that many at all would make it to get that large that old.

He added that the species of fish may still be in Clear Lake, where the fish was caught. The body of water is just outside of New Ulm.

This fish probably had numerous brothers and sisters that were yellow but died or were eaten at a young age. So none of them make it behind, so it means those genes are in that lake too, which means another one could show up at another time down the line.

The technical term for the fish is a xanthic crappie -- it's essentially the same thing as an albino of other species.

Here's a different occasion where one was caught in Wisconsin in 2013:

Konakowitz, who plans to mount the fish, said that he hopes the rare catch will encourage younger people to give the sport a go.

“I hope it inspires kids to come out and try fishing, and maybe they will get their chance to get something like that.”

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